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Obama to Issue Disastrous"Cybersecurity" Executive Order

The American people stopped Congress from passing disastrous so-called cybersecurity bills that would infringe on the free speech and privacy of internet users. Nothing short of amazing happened when Congress tried to ram through CISPA, SOPA, and PIPA. The defeat of these bills showed the power of grassroots activism as countless activists rose up and took action by calling their congressmen and spreading the word on social media.

Senator Joe Lieberman hasn’t been pleased.

Lieberman was the lead co-sponsor of the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 that failed to muster up the 60 votes it needed to overcome a filibuster in the Senate.

Now, according to the Daily Caller, Lieberman is pushing Obama to issue a cybersecurity executive order identical to the Cybersecurity Act of 2012:

In a letter to President Barack Obama Monday, Lieberman urged the administration to use the president’s 'executive authority to the maximum extent possible to defend the nation from cyber attack.'

Outrageous.

There’s a reason that the Founding Fathers were so adamant on a system of checks and balances to help ensure that one branch does not become too powerful.

But the Obama administration believes that it can simply bypass the legislative branch anytime they feel like it. Obama has passed a whopping 139 executive orders to date.

Unfortunately, it looks like Joe Lieberman may soon be getting his wish.

The Daily Caller reports that a “cybersecurity” executive order currently being written closely resembles Lieberman’s bill:

While President Barack Obama still needs to approve the order, Napolitano told senators Wednesday that the order is now 'close to completion.'

While the exact details of the executive order are still unknown, it would be a huge mistake for Obama to sign an executive order implementing a misguided bill that failed to pass the Senate.

The broad language in the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 leaves the door wide open for abuse. It would set up a new government bureaucracy called the National Cybersecurity Council to govern cybersecurity for “critical infrastructure” and it could encourage companies to share more of our private information with the federal government.

This is problematic because it would allow the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to define what falls under the category of “critical infrastructure”. Since it is not known which industries fall under the DHS’s definition, it would essentially create a completely open-ended regulatory apparatus for internet security.

Rather than improving internet security, the multi-year process of creating government standards would halt private innovation in cybersecurity because no one wants to invest in something that may or may not meet government standards that have yet to be defined. No one is quite sure how much it will cost to implement these burdensome regulations. This bill will likely be a job killer because businesses could be dramatically impacted by the new costs imposed by the bill.

We must remain vigilant and stop any efforts by the federal government to control the internet.

And considering that according to the U.S. constitution he's not even the president.....
Article II, Section 1 - No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty-five years, and been fourteen years a resident within the United States.

The fight over NSA surveillance is about to heat up again. This week, the House will consider a measure that would require the NSA and other government agencies to follow due process and obtain a warrant to collect the communications of American citizens. Through an amendment to H.R. 5293, the Department of Defense Appropriations Act of 2017, the House could defund warrantless government searches of the database of information collected under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

In a blow to Internet freedom, a federal appeals court has given a green light to the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) Open Internet Order, a plan to impose net neutrality rules on the Internet. Most disturbingly, the ruling yesterday by a 3-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit affirmed the basis for the Order, the FCC's determination that it can apply utility-style regulations – intended for telephone companies under the Communications Act of 1934 – to land-based and wireless Internet service providers (ISP). In one of the most egregious instances of overreaching by federal agencies under the Obama Administration, the FCC used the determination to grant itself sweeping power to regulate the Internet, opening the door to a plethora of burdensome Internet regulations.

In a Tuesday morning letter to the Federal Trade Commission, a group of tech companies and advocates including the Center for Media Justice, Yelp, Pinterest, and Kickstarter have expressed concerned over the FCC’s application of net neutrality rules to zero-rating plans.

In 1995, the Internet began, in earnest, as a commercial endeavor. Since that time, its growth has been explosive. Starting with only 16 million users that first year, the Internet now has over 3.4 billion users today—almost half the world’s population.

Engineers at Apple are drawing a line in the sand. According to The Hill, multiple employees of the company have stated that they will outright refuse to comply with orders from the FBI to weaken iPhone security, should the agency prevail in an ongoing court battle. For some, this would mean resigning from the company, for others, simply declining to write specific code, whatever the cost may be to their professional futures.

FreedomWorks has signed onto the following coalition letter, led by the R Street Institute. This letter urges support for H.R. 4350, a recent bipartisan bill introduced by Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) that would repeal the Cybersecurity Act of 2015. As you may recall, this major bill was tucked into the omnibus government funding bill in December of last year, with no chance for most lawmakers to even read it. The bill contains fundamental flaws with regard to privacy and due process, detailed in the letter below, and should be repealed.

Following the addition of language to the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act that permanently extends the existing ban on taxation of Internet access, FreedomWorks Legislative Affairs Manager Josh Withrow commented:

In the mad rush of trying to pass as much terrible legislation as possible before the holiday deadline, Congress is actually doing one thing worth praising. A permanent extension of the Internet Tax Freedom Act is being included in the conference report for a bill aimed at modernizing the U.S. customs system. The bill is expected to pass by the end of the year, and the included measure would make permanent the ban on states and localities taxing access to the internet, a ban that has existed since 1998 and which has had to be repeatedly renewed since that time.

The Senate and House intelligence committees are working towards selling out Americans' privacy this weekend for the illusion of cybersecurity. Specifically, the Senate's Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) and its two House counterparts (the NCPAA and PCNA) are merging -- but indications are that they may be doing so by adopting the worst provisions from each of the three bills. Worst of all, the majority of the input appears to be coming more from the intelligence committees, and not from the people who would actually have oversight of the information sharing regime in the Homeland Security Committees.